Poles apart - Antarctic

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I DON'T claim to be Ernest Shackleton's under-achieving
reincarnation - although for a time I'd started to wonder. The
legendary polar explorer once dressed as a bear and danced on a
street corner for money. Me too. He was manic, moody and
hot-tempered (and intemperate) but let's not dwell on one's
foibles. Shackleton had a complicated life with women. I have three
daughters is the short version.

And of course we're talking about the great Ernest Shackleton,
who in 1915 stood on the pack ice in Antarctica and watched his
ship crushed and sink to the bottom of the sea. That happened to me
also, in January 1986.

I didn't take our connection too seriously until last year when
I was invited back to the Antarctic ice. World Expeditions was
launching a series of cruises featuring a real-life "world-famous
Antarctic explorer" on board to mingle with the 50 paying
expeditioners and tell a few ripping yarns.

Life-long adventurer Peter Hillary (twice to the top of Everest,
a haunted walk to the South Pole) had been booked as the inaugural
hero du jour. Hillary, a close friend for the past 14 years, was
taking me along as his sidekick with an interesting anecdote to
share. "I thought we could do a talk together," he said. "I've got
to give a lecture on the history of exploration. We can put up your
photographs of the ship going down and you can tell the story." "A
PowerPoint presentation?"

I shuddered.

Of course, I was very excited about the trip itself. I first saw
Antarctica when I was 23 and fell dopily in love.

Living in the light of another world. The penguins, seals,
seabirds and whales were all very moving - heartbreakingly
beautiful to behold, particularly through the terrible storms. And
in their own way the storms were as beautiful as the many kinds of
blue in the icebergs. I loved the storms.

But what I loved most was the trippy experience of living under
the emotional southern sky: so stark and alien, overwhelming with
treasures (like the warm electric colours of a 2am sunset and the
sunrise that follows minutes later) and everything so clear to the
eye that it works to brighten the mind. It's like taking a drug,
and over the years I've done all sorts of things to bring on the
feeling of being there.

After that first trip, I used to stand in the shower with the
south-facing window open to the winter's morning breeze, the clear,
high sky and the faraway sun burning golden and friendly. Just five
or six years ago, I drove through the night to arrive at the Twelve
Apostles at dawn to meet a storm blasting from the bottom of the
world: a big, cold wind that blew brutally all the way to
Queensland. I had to hold my wife like a bag of spuds so she wasn't
carried off. That was a great Antarctic morning, but there's
nothing better than going back to the place.

So yes, I was keen for a cruise.

And I could already see how this trip would further my parallel
life with Ernest Shackleton. I've collected a long list of the
things that we have in common and keep an eye open for anything
new.

"This will be my fourth trip," I said.

The great man did four Antarctic journeys: the first two
approaching from the Australian side, the last two from the South
American side. My first three trips had followed the pattern, this
one would complete it.

And then Hillary dropped a stinker: "Shackleton died on his
fourth trip."

Ernest Shackleton was 48 when he headed south for the fourth
time and he died one night from a heart attack.

"And I'm turning 48," I said.

Hillary thought this hilarious and in my rational mind I would
have thought so too. But my neurotic mind was working away busily,
more effectively."Oh, man," said Hillary. "You've been on the verge
of death since I've known you."

Three months passed. I got fatter and fatter, brooding on Ernest
Shackleton's heart attack. I feel I'd almost trained for it by the
time we flew into Ushuaia, the booming frontier town at the tip of
South America, where the welcome sign proclaims Fin de Mundo: the
end of the world.

It's a cheery place. Coming out of the clouds, Ushuaia appears
as a sprinkling of gaiety over the mighty toes of the Andes, where
the feet of the mountains meet the flat of the sea. Up close, the
town is weatherblown and gritty but still pretty, with the many
rustic fairytale houses, rickety but painted bright and colourful,
decorated with carvings and magical signs, flowering the wild,
sloping country that rises steeply from the waterfront.

High up, the pretty houses meet a beech forest where you can
take a steep walk to a wilting glacier. It's a wonderful place to
return to and we'd bought ourselves an extra night before meeting
the ship.

Hillary was very jolly on our beautiful walks in the hills
whereas I fretted over every loud thump of the heart, thinking:
"Here it comes." For comfort in the evenings there was the famous
barbecued lamb and tasty Argentine malbec. The lambs are split and
roasted on a tripod of thin poles set over an open fire, the
waiters charming as tango dancers. Some people at a nearby table
were holding hands and thanking God for their food. They were
wearing brand-new adventure clothes. I was wearing a thick-knit
crewneck fisherman's jumper as favoured by Shackleton. It's a style
that suits the beefier man.

Three weeks before Christmas, the night cold and wet, the
shopping strip dripping here and there with giant decorations:
gaudy meets the gauchos. We walked around, waiting for the sky to
get dark. Many of the shop windows were home to fluffy toy penguins
with "fin del mundo" stitched into their little beanies. We found a
bar with a big window facing south, sat there drinking beer,
talking about our teenage daughters. It took a long time to get
dark, near to midnight, and there it was on the southern horizon, a
ghostly glowing whiteness like the promise of a jewelled moon: the
light of another world, burning around the clock and two days away
by ship.

Down at the dock, the royal-blue five-star Marco Polo stood
waiting, but not for us. Our ship was the little one in its shadow,
the Aleksey Maryshev, originally a Russian research vessel - about
60 metres long with no heated pool or casino or eggs Benedict for
breakfast, not looking like a cruise liner at all but a solid
working ship, and that suited me fine. Being a veteran of the
Antarctic-cruise speaking circuit, Hillary has worked the Marco
Polo a dozen times. I'd joined him in 2002 and just loved the
luxury but also found it strangely insulating and distracting from
the Antarctic ambience.With hundreds of people aboard, the trips
ashore were highly controlled for safety reasons and took hours to
pull off. The Aleksey Maryshev was promising to be a more relaxed
and intimate affair, the shore visits much longer and less
restricted. Also, the Russian boat reminded me of my first polar
ship, the Nella Dan, which used to service the Australian Antarctic
bases until it went to the bottom of the sea in 1987. I wasn't
there at the time. It was my second ship, the Southern Quest (about
half the size of the Aleksey Maryshev), that sank in front of me
the year before. And I suppose I should mention that a year after I
travelled on the Marco Polo, the big palace hit a rock, all but
sinking the captain's career. I don't like the word jinx. It
stinks. But as it turned out, some of my fellow travellers on the
Aleksey Maryshev seemed to take some comfort in my curious maritime
history.

I generally loathe travelling in groups, it brings out the worst
in me, but the Aleksey Maryshev crowd were a particularly good
bunch, mostly Australians and most of them in their 50s and 60s,
some even older. A number of the older married couples had been
saving for more than 10 years to see Antarctica. Was it simply to
see the icebergs? Or was it to get an existential jolt? It took two
days to cross the Drake Passage, the manic and sometimes demonic
patch of the Southern Ocean, fast-flowing in the squeeze between
South America and Antarctica, and prone to a hurricane-strength
storm about every three weeks.

Many of the passengers had found the hurricane aspect of things
on the internet and some were obviously anxious in a jokey kind of
way. One fellow tried asking the ship's crew when the next big
blast was due but they were all Russians, making heavy with the
cigarettes and not so hot with the English.

"It's a shame we can't fly there," a woman lamented as we
steamed along the Beagle Channel towards the open sea, the water
coughing like a lion in the night, the grunt of it against the
belly of the ship.

The weather wasn't too bad at all: a bit blustery, a big,
pulsing sea (yes, like being in a giant washing machine on slow
cycle) with an occasional momentary rush of the roller-coaster and
much falling around and clattering of crockery. Some ships are
built to roll around like a drunk, and the Aleksey Maryshev is one
of them. Regardless, only a couple of people were laid low by
seasickness for the entire crossing. Most people got over their
queasiness pretty quickly, standing out on the heaving deck to
watch the seabirds big and tiny in aerial combat with the waves,
coming in for a hot drink at the undersized lounge and bar,
crowding into the dining room/lecture hall for the daily stories
and videos from Hillary and the how-to lectures from ornithologist
Toni Whyte and travel photographer Richard I'Anson. Also, we'd
brought a crate of malbec aboard, a mixed selection from the
supermarket in Ushuaia. Antarctica is a wonderful place to have a
few drinks.

This was my friendliest journey south. Not just the people but
Antarctica itself was extremely welcoming. The first iceberg was
spotted amid a late evening sky of golden sparks, "possibly an
island or a rock" people were saying as they came out of their
cabins, some half in their pyjamas, and there it was: not just the
giant tabular iceberg (think of a squat runaway office block made
of glass) but in its full glory the light of another world.

I can tell you about our first landing on a rocky beach where
the snow came in sideways, the giant whalebones, the people who
went swimming in volcanic waters, the penguins, seals and the many
colours of blue. My favourite evening of the trip began on the
beach in Neko Harbour when a massive chunk of ice cracked away from
the glacier and fell a long time silently before thundering
magnificently into the water, sending pressure waves a metre tall
into the rocky beach where a few of us had stood and waited for
something big to happen. We took our time watching the ice fall
before turning and making a run for it. An hour or so later we were
back on the ship having a barbecue and dancing on the front deck,
still at it in the early hours with no sunset to speak of, a quiet
sky impossibly coloured, the day never dying.

John Elder travelled courtesy of World Expeditions and
Aerolineas Argentinas.

Fast facts

Getting there: World Expeditions has organised
a special 11-day Antarctic Explorer voyage to the Antarctic
Peninsula and the South Shetland Islands for December 2007 with
polar explorer Jon Muir as specialist guide. Muir walked to the
South Pole in 1998 with Peter Hillary and later travelled to the
North Pole. The voyage aboard the Aleksey Maryshev is from December
9 to 19 from Ushuaia, Argentina. The vessel sleeps just 50
guests.

Exploring there: Staying dry is even more
important than staying warm, so ensure that parkas and overpants
are waterproof.

Rubber boots are required for beach landings. Make sure you get
a pair that you can walk in comfortably and with plenty of room for
two pairs of socks. On the snowfields, the only walking tracks are
penguins trails and must be avoided.

Wildlife encounters will be intimate and close. It's worth
reading up on how penguins display signs of distress.